Job One, Left Undone

One of the things we heard incessantly in the past two election cycles is that we needed to elect Democrats to return competent governing to Washington. Behold competence in action:

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer made official Tuesday morning what most insiders have known for months: Congress won’t do a budget this year.

Instead, Democrats are pushing an alternative route that falls well short of the more rigorous annual budget resolution — a short-term resolution that will call for discretionary spending lower than in President Barack Obama’s fiscal 2011 budget. But he said Congress wouldn’t take longer-term budget action before hearing from Obama’s fiscal commission in December. Republicans have lambasted Democrats for not passing a budget resolution, saying that’s the first time it’s happened since 1976.

I think we can give that competence thing a rest, Democrats. My goodness. How in the world can you not pass a budget? The business about waiting to hear from a commission is ludicrous -- we don't elect commissions, we elect a Congress to make budgetary decisions.

So let's see if we have this straight -- our solons aren't capable of devising an operating budget for those matters that are within their purview, but they are fully capable of passing a bill that completely changes the health care industry in this country. And Steny and his pals also feel they are somehow capable of making decisions about how every American should use energy, with a coercive regulatory scheme to undergird their decisionmaking process and to enforce compliance with their dictates. Yeah, that should work out well.